Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Boy, 16, asphyxiated in November after being restrained inside a closet (Owens had refused to show the staffer what he was holding in his hand, which turned out to be the cap of a pen)

By TERRI LANGFORD HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Jan. 7, 2011

Texas - The restraint death of a 16-year-old boy at Daystar Residential Inc., a facility for troubled children, has been ruled a homicide caused by "complications of mechanical asphyxia," according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science.

Michael Kevin Owens suffocated and died on Nov. 5 after a Daystar staffer placed him in a physical restraint inside a bedroom closet because he would not show the staffer what he held in his hand. Owens' death was the fourth restraint-related fatality to occur at Daystar or its sister facilities. Daystar is located 25 miles south of Houston.

The name of the staffer has not been released, and the case will go before a grand jury to determine whether criminal charges will be filed, according to Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne.

Owens' death occurred just days after the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services notified Daystar that it was on probation, and the incident prompted the agency to place the Manvel-based facility, for the third time, under the watch of a state monitor.

The agency is reviewing the autopsy report, which was issued to them late Thursday.

"We have been going through a very deliberate process of evaluating Daystar's state license, and this ruling is an important piece," said Patrick Crimmins, DFPS' spokesman.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Student with bloody eyes will likely change schools

By JOSH GREEN

jgreen@wfla.com

Published: November 4, 2010

Updated: 11/04/2010 06:57 pm

TAMPA A 14 year-old boy who claims a school aide put him in a restraining hold that led to his eyes bleeding will likely wind up at a new school. The white part of Abdullah Fisher's eyes were still blood red today, a week after the incident at Dorothy Thomas School.

"When Abdullah was getting choked - he told him that he couldn't breathe," said Deborah Williams, his mother. "I don't want Abdullah going back to that school."

Fisher said it started last Thursday when he "smacked" paper out of his teacher's hands. Staff called in the school's resource officer, formally called an exceptional student education aide, and a scuffle escalated, according to Fisher. That aide tried to put Fisher in a time-out room, but he fought back.

"He took me up and he slammed me," Fisher said. "He had me ... in the Full Nelson move. I kept telling him I couldn't breathe."Fisher is 14, but because of a disability is on a third grade level, according to his mother. By the time he got off the bus Thursday afternoon, blood was dripping from his left eye, according to family witnesses at home.

"I had blood on my shirt," Fisher said. "The bus driver [saw] it … and asked me what happened."

Hospital paperwork shows he suffered a subconjunctival hemorrhage, which causes blood to leak from a broken vessel in the eyes. He also sustained an acute cervical strain.

By Wednesday afternoon, school administrators called Williams to set up a meeting today. A special education instructor will evaluate Fisher and his mother to see what school will fit him best. Williams said school leaders could have Fisher placed in a new school by Monday.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

West Palm Beach, Fla. - A 6 year-old boy, diagnosed with severe autism, was bitten in his own classroom at Belvedere Elementary in West Palm Beach.

"This is upsetting to us, this is the first time this particular substitute has worked in this school, and I believe in this district," said Nat Harrington, Public Information Officer with Palm Beach County Schools.

According to the school's principal, it happened in front of two other teachers, who quickly reported the incident.

It is unclear what happened to provoke the attack, but the school said the teacher bit the 6 year-old in the arm.

"We do have enough evidence to indicate that there was inappropriate behavior on the part of a substitute teacher," said Harrington.

The man, whom school district officials refused to identify, was filling in for a speech teacher in a special needs classroom.

"There is a police investigation, and there's also an employee investigation, those have just been launched," said Harrington.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The mother of a 13-year-old disabled boy who suspected his caregiver was abusing him said a hidden nanny-cam confirmed her suspicion.

Bereket Haile is charged with first-degree criminal abuse.

"The first time he does, it is a single blow; thereafter, he'll just go up to the child and hit him three, four times consecutively," said Detective Charles Peck, describing the alleged abuse in court Tuesday.

Haile was the in-home sitter sent to Penny and Gary Harbin's home to take care of their son, Kris, who is severely autistic, has seizures and can't speak.

The Harbins said a nanny-cam hidden in a stuffed animal caught Haile hitting their son multiple times.

Peck told the court what happened when he asked Haile to come in for questioning after viewing the tape himself.

"We did sit down and we talked, and during that process, he denied hitting the victim, but when I played him the tape that I viewed, he said what he did was wrong and he shouldn't have done it," Peck said.

"Florida was going to be the model for other states to follow," said Lori Mcllwain, a spokeswoman for the 10,000-member American Autism Association.

By the time it got to the governor's desk, though, Hukill's bill was stripped of its toughest provision: Instead of banning prone restraint, the bill was altered to bar restraint that can restrict a child's breathing.

"They took a good bill that had protective language for children with disabilities and gutted the bill, took out all the safety precautions," said Phyllis Musumeci, a mother whose son was forcibly held in a prone restraint more than 20 times at a Palm Beach County school. The Autism Association agreed: In a 180-degree turn, the group urged a letter writing campaign to persuade Gov. Charlie Crist to veto the bill.

"Was it as strong as I would have liked it to be? No," said Hukill of the new law, which took effect this year. "Am I delighted that we are finally addressing the problem? Absolutely."

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Even so, parts of the new law may not be as effective as hoped. Take training. Provisions call for enhanced training to offset risk. When it comes to prone restraint, though, Ohio's search of national literature doesn't support that idea, said Michael Rench, Ohio Rehabilitative Services Commission Administrator. Ohio last year banned prone restraint by most government employees, including teachers. "Everything we found was that it just is not safe even when applied by well-trained individuals," he said. As an example, Mark Kamleiter, a St. Petersburg lawyer and former public school behavioral specialist said prone restraint frequently calls for two or more people to apply force. One person may know the amount of force he is applying, but wouldn't necessarily know how much force the other person is applying. "You can hurt the child by accident," he points out.

For instance, 12-year-old Michael Wiltsie died in an Ocala youth camp in 2000 after a counselor pinned him to the ground. A grand jury found that the counselor was following proper procedures.

"You cannot train a person how to safely do a prone restraint," said Barbara Trader, executive director of TASH, a Washington advocacy group for people with disabilities. "It's not possible."

October 11, 2010

A group of city educators gets training to defuse situations when students become angry or upset.

PORTLAND - Peter McCormack moves around the room as if the information he's about to share can't wait to get out.

In front of him are 17 Portland teachers, education technicians, social workers and others who have signed up for a three-day training course in how to use Therapeutic Crisis Intervention techniques in school.

Some of them will stay for a fourth day to learn how to do physical restraints or holds, a controversial practice allowed in Maine schools when students are in danger of hurting themselves or others and all other efforts to calm them have failed.

"You are the best tool in any crisis situation," McCormack tells the teachers. "There are so many things you can do before resorting to physical intervention. Restraint truly is the intervention of last resort."

McCormack invited The Portland Press Herald to cover a recent training session in the hope of shedding light on a practice that is being scrutinized here in Maine and across the nation. Pressure is on to reduce the use of restraints, and many Maine schools are responding with increased training in alternative intervention methods and positive student supports.

In general, the methods call for building personal relationships with students, setting clear expectations for behavior, recognizing when and why students may be struggling or acting out, and responding with logic and compassion rather than anger and contempt.

"When a child is upset, it didn't happen out of nowhere, folks," McCormack says during the first day of training. "There's always a cause. It may not be right in front of you, but it's there. You have to know your child. And depending on your response, you're either going to throw gasoline on the situation or you're going to throw water on the situation."

***********

Superintendent Jim Morse has charged McCormack and East End Principal Marcia Gendron, also newly appointed from her former job as principal of Reiche Community School, with greatly reducing the number of restraints at East End.

"More often than not, the use of restraint only escalates a situation," Morse said. "Our goal is to keep kids in school and keep them learning. We want teachers to have the skill sets in their toolbox to de-escalate disruptive situations and help youngsters refocus."

Morse said he wants to reduce the overall number of physical restraints in Portland schools, which last year included seven at Longfellow Elementary School, four at Riverton Community School, three at Lyseth Elementary School and two at Moore Middle School. Nine other Portland public schools reported no restraints.

Moreover, Morse said, he wants all Portland schools to have a more positive and personal approach to behavior and discipline. With that in mind, he's moving to adopt a federally endorsed system known as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports across Maine's largest school district.

Two school boards revised a disciplinary policy this week regarding corporal punishment.

The Davidson County and Thomasville City school systems upgraded their “School Plan for Management of Student Behavior” to bring it into compliance with N.C. House Bill 1682, which legislators recently passed and will be effective this school year.

Lexington City Schools prohibits corporal punishment for all students, with the policy stating other consequences are more appropriate and effective for teaching self-control.

The revision for the county and Thomasville touches on administering corporal punishment to students who are classified as having a disability. It states the punishment may not be given to disabled students whose parents or guardians have not given permission. Parents are given a permission form at the start of the school year.

“There have to be very special precautions before any kind of corporal punishment is to be administered,” said Dr. Fred Mock, superintendent of Davidson County Schools. “We took a look at the entire corporal punishment policy. We do not prohibit it.”

Thomasville City Schools went a step above the state policy and added a section in which corporal punishment will only take place if a parent signs a statement giving permission to the administrator and the parent or guardian has to be present.

A phone call tipped off Darlene Foster that something had gone wrong at Lantana Middle School.

"If this was my child, I would want to know," an anonymous teacher warned her. "They're restraining your son."

Foster and her husband raced to the school to find 12-year-old Joshua held down by five men. Two had pinned his arms to a mat, two held down his legs, and another had his knee in the back of the 80-pound boy, who has a curved spine.

Joshua, who also has autism and cerebral palsy, had refused to go to art class and would not move from the school courtyard.

Joshua was subjected to an especially harsh form of prone restraint, a maneuver in which the child is held face down until he stops struggling.

So risky that six states have banned it outright in schools, prone restraint remains legal in Florida: Palm Beach County schools have used it on disabled students more than 1,500 times since 2007, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis. Most were elementary schoolchildren. Some were in pre- kindergarten.

*****

Prone restraint is used to immobilize an out-of-control student. Typically, two or three adults pull a student from a standing position down to a mat or other surface onto his stomach, and hold his limbs down.

It's almost exclusively used with special education students.

Injury can occur several ways. Adults may accidentally compress a child's chest, cutting off his air supply: A Cornell University study cited asphyxia in 28 deaths of children or teens after prone restraint. Because the child is face down, it can be hard to see signs of distress. Improperly applied pressure can bruise, or break a bone. Students with cardiac or respiratory conditions such as asthma are at special risk of injury or death.

"The national research was just overwhelming," said Michael Rench, Ohio Rehabilitative Services Commission administrator and a player in Ohio's decision to ban prone restraint. "We could not imagine why we would do that to people. It just was not defensible."

Even absent physical harm, a child's experience of being pushed to the ground and forcibly held can trigger emotional trauma that shows up as depression, increased anger and fearfulness, according to studies by national disability rights groups.

VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. -- A 12-year-old boy was bullied and humiliated so badly at Holly Hill Middle School that he ended up in a corner, crying uncontrollably. After an attack in a gym locker room, his gym teacher has been suspended from school and two students were charged with misdemeanors.

The incident moved beyond verbal and physical abuse. The boys are accused of using a cell phone to take a picture of the victim, forwarding it to others, and shouting, "Put it on the Internet!"

It was after a middle school gym class last Tuesday, sheriff reports say, that a sixth-grade special needs student had his pants pulled down, shirt pulled up and was photographed by four school bullies.

"When they told me something happened in the locked room, boys were bullying him, I just cut him off, said I'll be right there," said Melissa Jones, the victim's mother.

Jones said Monday the incident has left her son traumatized. The boy, who was on suicide watch after a bullying incident last year, tried to return to school, but couldn't make it through the day.

Two of his classmates are now charged with battery and disorderly conduct for the incident,and the school district sent their teacher, Wayne Wheeler, home on paid leave. The allegation is that Wheeler wasn't watching the students as he should have been.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

A first grade teacher in West Chester and director of a local summer camp was arrested on charges of having hundreds of images of child pornography, authorities say.

David Devine, a first grade teacher for the West Chester Area School District and director of Camp Flying Hawk day camp, possessed more than 500 sexually explicit images of elementary-school-age children, according to Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green.

Devine, 34, taught first graders at Penn Wood Elementary for a year and a half, officials said. The district said Devine passed all required background tests before starting at the school.

"Devines clearances were completed prior to his employment," the district said in a statement. "No infractions were reported in these clearances, and we have had no reports of any improper conduct by Mr. Devine during his employment with the district."

School district officials say their Internet filtering system prevents anyone from accessing pornographic sites on school property.

Investigators were tipped off to Devine's alleged habits by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

It is unknown whether or not the photos are of any children with which Devine was in contact, but D.A. Green says there's no reason thus far to believe that to be the case.

A first grade teacher in West Chester and director of a local summer camp was arrested on charges of having hundreds of images of child pornography, authorities say.

David Devine, a first grade teacher for the West Chester Area School District and director of Camp Flying Hawk day camp, possessed more than 500 sexually explicit images of elementary-school-age children, according to Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green.

Devine, 34, taught first graders at Penn Wood Elementary for a year and a half, officials said. The district said Devine passed all required background tests before starting at the school.

"Devines clearances were completed prior to his employment," the district said in a statement. "No infractions were reported in these clearances, and we have had no reports of any improper conduct by Mr. Devine during his employment with the district."

School district officials say their Internet filtering system prevents anyone from accessing pornographic sites on school property.

Investigators were tipped off to Devine's alleged habits by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

It is unknown whether or not the photos are of any children with which Devine was in contact, but D.A. Green says there's no reason thus far to believe that to be the case.

A former student at Frick Middle School who claimed that teasing from fellow students about her weight -- and the administration's failure to halt the abuse -- led her to develop anorexia has agreed to settle her federal lawsuit.

Filed by the girl, identified as "B.G." and her mother, "Mary V." in U.S. District Court last August citing a hostile school environment, the suit will settle for $55,000, as well as the cost of mediation.

The Pittsburgh Public Schools board approved the settlement in May. However, according to the plaintiffs' lawyer, he has been unable to get in touch with his client since then.

"Mary V. has ceased communications with her counsel. She has failed to return phone calls or respond to correspondence," wrote Edward G. Olds in a motion to the court last week.

The only issue left open at the time of the mediation, Mr. Olds said, was the division of the settlement proceeds between the mother and daughter.

U.S. District Judge Donetta W. Ambrose has scheduled a hearing on the settlement for today.

Schools Solicitor Ira Weiss said he is hoping that Judge Ambrose will issue an order enforcing the settlement action.

"It is not uncommon for parties to seek court intervention to enforce a settlement," Mr. Weiss said.

At the time of mediation, he added, all of the parties were present and signed a summary of what they expected the settlement to be.

For years we have been told to not lock our pets in our cars even in cool weather. Public service announcements have flooded the media warning of the dangers that quickly arise causing heatstroke and suffocation.

[1] It takes only minutes for a pet left in a vehicle on a warm day to succumb to heatstroke and suffocation. Most people don't realize how hot it can get in a parked car on a balmy day. However, on a 78 degree day, temperatures in a car parked in the shade can exceed 90 degrees -- and hit a scorching 160 degrees if parked in the sun!

But on July 24, 2010 a residential treatment facility in Eastern Pennsylvania left a 20 year old Autistic boy locked in a sweltering hot van parked in the facility's own parking lot for more than five hours in 97 degree weather. Brian Nevins' lifeless body was found in the van only after a staff nurse could not find him to administer medications.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that after an outing to Sesame Place in Langhorne PA, a Woods Services counselor dropped off a colleague and two of his clients on campus. She then drove a short distance to adjoining homes where her two clients lived. Only one of her two clients was taken into the facility. Brian Nevins was left in a back passenger seat with locked doors that could only be opened from outside. According to the Inquirer, the unnamed counselor returned to work and finished her shift, clocking out and leaving a few hours later.

While the unnamed counselor, who has been suspended, appears to be the primary focus of the investigation, many questions come to mind regarding the entire facility's treatment of residents. In November, a 17-year-old Woods resident died when he was struck by cars after falling from a highway overpass. The Bucks County Coroner's Office ruled that death accidental.

The charge nurse found Alexis Evette Richie alone in a small room at SSM DePaul Health Center, motionless and sprawled facedown on a bean bag chair.

Minutes earlier, the 16-year-old foster child had tried to hit, scratch and bite staff members in the adolescent psychiatric ward. Two aides grabbed her arms and took her down a hall and into a small room called the "quiet room."

They held her facedown in the chair while a nurse injected a sedative into her hip. Alexis continued to struggle and then went limp.

The nurse and the two aides left without checking her pulse or making sure she was breathing.